Praise and Reviews
Mark Budman
has a pitch-perfect ear for the rhythms and
sounds of English filtered through the hypervigilant sensibilities of
an immigrant. The narrator's mordantly witty, deadpan account of his
life is told in short discrete segments like a string of
linked stories, and the cumulative power of this voice drives the novel
from first page to last. Mark Budman is a powerful, exciting, and
original writer, and "My Life At First Try" deserves recognition and
success.
Katharine Weber, the author of "Triangle" and
"The Little Women"
Just when you think you've seen enough autobiographic
novels, Budman's debut makes you thankful you kept the door open. In
prose that is simultaneously droll and sincere, unflappable yet laced
with pathos, this is a book that will stay with you not in pithy quotes
but as the texture of an experience.
Cris Mazza, the author of "Waterbaby" and
"Homeland"
Mark Budman’s "My Life at First
Try," is smart and funny and compelling,
and in an era when both the immigrant experience and the resurgent
aggression of the once-Soviet Russia are central issues, the novel is
timely, as well. This is a splendid debut by an important new
American voice.
Robert
Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner, the author of
"Intercourse" and "Severance"
From
Publisher's Weekly:
This blazingly fast
and funny "semi-autobiographical" novel follows a Russian man's
comically earnest pursuit of the American dream. As a child, Alex,
living in 1950s Siberia with his parents and grandparents, sees a
picture of his American-born second cousin, Annie, and he believes he
has found his destiny. Throughout his formative sexual experiences, he
fantasizes about Annie, who embodies the exoticness of Western culture
and the wholesomeness of the American dream. By the late 1970s, when
Alex's parents decide to decamp for the U.S., Alex packs up his wife
and their young daughter, too, and after the trio land in upstate New
York, Alex goes to work at the IBM-like HAL Corporation while his wife,
Lyuba, an internist, takes longer to settle in. At first, Alex is
content with his new freedom-loving democratic identity, but as his
children grow and Lyuba becomes more independent the dream begins to
lose its sheen. The novel is hilarious, eye-opening and, by the end, a
little depressing. It's tough not to have Alex's buoyant energy rub off
on the reader.
From Kirkus Review:
A funny, little-seen version of the American dream.
From Booklist:
Readers who enjoy a fast-paced narrative will take
pleasure in
Alex’s inquisitive journey.
From
People
Magazine:
A mordant dreamer, the protagonist of this first novel
is deliciously at odds with his comrades in Russia; in college, the son
of Jewish refugees disses a Chechen brute and barely escapes a mugging.
... this soulful tale about a perpetual outsider marks a debut well
worth celebrating.
From
San Francisco Chronicle:
Life zips by, a cascade of events that we can barely assimilate. If we
have enough time to jot down even a few well-made observations - and
there are more than a few in this entertaining novel -- that will have
to suffice.
From
the Boston Globe:
Budman's description of his attempt to become an even
more exotic
specimen - himself - in the USSR and later in the United States, may be
more memoir than fiction, but the novel's exuberance demolishes such
boundaries.
From
The Washington Post:
He's an endearing narrator, who plunges into idiomatic
English with a
winning sense of fun at his own expense and just a touch of that
wonderful Russian accent. "I'm an indestructible charm machine," he
tells us, "smooth and naturally well-oiled." Through high school and
then engineering college, he wages a "private war against the internal
enemy -- my own virginity."
From
Time Out Chicago:
Budman tells his story (it’s admittedly
semi-autobiographical) in
tight, tiny vignettes, a form he’s accustomed to as the publisher of
the flash-fiction magazine Vestal Review. Told in
such short
sections, the story comes through in patches that, over time, enmesh,
overlap and weave together into a rich, if haggard, story of a life..
